Main menu

Roxie's Readers

Roxie's Readers set up in December, and the group has already read "Finding Chika" by Mitch Albom, "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood," the book the recent movie is based on, and "The Nickel Boys" by Colton Whitehead.

Roxie's Readers Are Reading "Your Second Life Begins When You Realize You Only Have One" in March, and "The Orchid Thief" in April

Your Second Life Begins: The feel-good #1 bestselling French novel about a woman whose mission to cure her "routine-itis" leads her to lasting joy and true fulfillment, for fans of "The Alchemist" and "Hector and the Search for Happiness." At thirty-eight and a quarter years old, Paris native Camille has everything she needs to be happy, or so it seems: a good job, a loving husband, a wonderful son. Why then does she feel as if happiness has slipped through her fingers? All she wants is to find the path to joy. When Claude, a French Sean Connery look-alike and routinologist, offers his unique advice to help get her there, she seizes the opportunity with both hands. Camille's journey is full of surprising escapades, creative capers, and deep meaning, as she sets out to transform her life and realize her dreams one step at a time. A charming, feel-good, and universal story of one woman's journey from boredom and dissatisfaction to happiness and fulfilment.

First published in France in 2015 as "Ta deuxiáeme vie commence quand tu comprends que tu n'en as qu'une."

Awards: No. 1 BESTSELLER IN FRANCE

The Orchid Thief: In Susan Orlean's mesmerizing true story of beauty and obsession is John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer and sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he is missing his front teeth and has the posture of al dente spaghetti. In 1994, Laroche and three Seminole Indians were arrested with rare orchids they had stolen from a wild swamp in south Florida that is filled with some of the world's most extraordinary plants and trees. Laroche had planned to clone the orchids and then sell them for a small fortune to impassioned collectors. After he was caught in the act, Laroche set off one of the oddest legal controversies in recent memory, which brought together environmentalists, Native American activists, and devoted orchid collectors. The result is a tale that is strange, compelling, and hilarious.

New Yorker writer Susan Orlean followed Laroche through swamps and into the eccentric world of Florida's orchid collectors, a subculture of aristocrats, fanatics, and smugglers whose obsession with plants is all-consuming. Along the way, Orlean learned the history of orchid collecting, discovered an odd pattern of plant crimes in Florida, and spent time with Laroche's partners, a tribe of Seminole Indians who are still at war with the United States.

There is something fascinating or funny or truly bizarre on every page of "The Orchid Thief:" the story of how the head of a famous Seminole chief came to be displayed in the front window of a local pharmacy; or how seven hundred iguanas were smuggled into Florida; or the case of the only known extraterrestrial plant crime. Ultimately, however, Susan Orlean's book is about passion itself, and the amazing lengths to which peoplewill go to gratify it. That passion is captured with singular vision in "The Orchid Thief," a once-in-a-lifetime story by one of our most original journalists.